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Helado Negro: PHASOR
New album: Finding that sweet spot with smooth, mellow Latin rhythms in an experimental mix of folk, jazz and electronica, the American artist of Ecuadorian Roberto Carlos Lange’s eighth studio album one of gentle, melting joy
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Chelsea Wolfe: She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To
New album: Dark, simmering, sensual, ghostly, goth-noir rock with restrained thundery rumblings by the California artist, in a powerfully effective, slow, atmospheric release that sounds like tears in a downpour, an echoey, innovative potion of metal melancholy
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Vera Sola: Peacemaker
New album: Oozing style and sophistication, the smoky, velvety-voiced American singer-songwriter returns with a follow-up her 2018 debut, Shades, with a sublime set of vivid, poetic, atmospheric songs, laced with a Nashville-recorded country, folk and ghostly, theatrical twang, and influences from Tom Waits to Dvořák
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TORRES: What An Enormous Room. It is indeed …
New album: Explore and enjoy the space? The sixth LP in a decade from Brooklyn singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Mackenzie Scott brings potent, uneasy, bold, stripped-back indie rock with her characterristically strong vocal presence
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J Mascis: What Do We Do Now
New album: Like Neil Young, a fine wine or a classic car, the Dinosaur Jr frontman returns with another (his fifth) solo LP, with melodies of ever maturing, timeless quality, rich in guitar, piano and that distinctive, emotive, croaky voice
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Erotic Secrets of Pompeii: Mondo Maleficum
New album: Gloriously theatrical, witty, panache-filled, this is a lavishly swaggering, swirling cauldron of excess, rock-pop, post-punk, prog, baroque indie, and classical, a debut whirlwind LP of history-spanning reference and energy, from Greek myth to Shakespeare and the apocalypse
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Katy Kirby: Blue Raspberry
New album: Following 2021’s strong debut Cool Dry Place, the Texas singer-songwriter returns with another collection of intelligent, sharply observed numbers with beautiful clarity of voice, fine balance of instrumentation, unflinching honesty, great turn of phrase, and powerful melodies
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Future Islands’s seventh LP: People Who Aren't There Anymore
New album: A decade after that sensational breakthrough performance on David Letterman, the Baltimore synthpop quartet release their best since – songs of thrumming melodies and heart-on-sleeve, passionate delivery by frontman Samuel T Herring
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The Smile: Wall of Eyes
New album: Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood join again with jazz drummer Tom Skinner for a second LP of cerebrally inventive, dark tracks, tinged with ghostly melancholy, at times almost more Radiohead than Radiohead
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Gruff Rhys: Sadness Sets Me Free, his 25th album overall
New album: The effortlessly talented Welshman, former Super Furry Animals frontman and all round nice guy returns with a gorgeously bittersweet album of wry humour and fabulous tunes inspired by the joys of writing about sad subjects
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Nailah Hunter: Lovegaze
New album: Slow, sensual, simmering, lingeringly beautiful numbers in this debut LP of experimental, ambient, will-o'-the-wisp, dream-like quality by the Los Angeles multi-instrumentalist, composer, singer and harpist with Belize ancestry
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Black Grape: Orange Head
New album: Salford’s Shaun Ryder and Manchester’s Paul ‘Kermit’ Leveridge return with their first LP since 2017’s Pop Voodoo, and their fourth overall together, with an especially funk-filled laced with their classic banter, wit and talent for cleverly daft, surreal and addictive lyrics
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Conchúr White: Swirling Violets
New album: Gorgeously sensitive, intimate, uplifting, grounded but dream-like folk-pop debut by the singer-songwriter from County Armagh, with blissful but pointed songs of a mystical, spiritual, existential and relatable nature
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Folly Group’s debut LP - Down There!
New album: After a series of strong singles and a couple of EPs, the London quartet and Goldsmith’s graduates’ full debut LP is explosive, taut, dark, energetic, angry post-punk brimming with inventive, rhythmic dynamism
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Emma Gatrill: Come Swim
New album: Deliciously gentle, subtle, clever and beautifully original alternative folk by the Brighton-based songwriter and multi-instrumentalist on a third LP that includes guests Kate Stables and Rozi Plain from This Is The Kit and Conor O’Brien from Villagers
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Marika Hackman: Big Sigh
New album: This visceral, hypersensitive, alternative folk-pop fourth album by the Hampshire-born singer-songwriter digs deep and dark into the psyche through personal crisis and relationship trauma as one of her best to date
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Bill Ryder-Jones: lechyd Da
New album: Merseyside’s former Coral guitarist and founder returns with a peach of an LP – a warm, musical embrace of and melancholy, opulently produced in his Yawn studio in West Kirby with piano, orchestral strings and a touch of brass
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Yungatita: Shoelace & A Knot
New album: Absorbing, eclectic, strangely addictive, catchy, jangly indie shoegaze with unusual guitar timbres by the Los Angeles musician and artist Valentina Zapata and band best known for the dreamily offbeat 2021 single 7 Weeks & 3 Days
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Bound by Endogamy
New album: Released last month, dark, oddball and original, this electronica, industrial, post-punk LP is full of fantastic visceral sounds and droll, vocal delivery by the Geneva-based duo Shlomo Balexert and Kleio Thomaïdes
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Favourite LPs of 2023, Part 2.
Welcome once again to the annual tradition of Song Bar’s favourite album releases of 2023. This is Part 2, and Part 1 was yesterday. There’s no such thing as a chart rundown or ‘best of’ here, and these come in no particular order …
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